Blog articles about Health Information Behavior

The changing nature of health information behavior is challenging pharmaceutical and medtech companies and their insights approaches.

Do you feel the same need to go “beyond the obvious” – the surface – of how patients engage with health information?

The health information behavior framework reveals behavior and unmet needs in more depth and detail than ever before. Drawing from a rich well of academic research, it illuminates the patient experience, as well as the influence of health information on medical decision-making along the patient journey.

Over the past few months, we introduced the marketing implications of health information behavior and discussed the impact of health information behavior on patient experiences.

In this blog, we reveal the practical applicability and outcomes of the health information behavior framework, including the actionable insights pharmaceutical and medtech marketers need: patient types, information tipping points, preferred sources and channels, unmet needs, as well as other potential marketing opportunities.

Read on to learn of two real-world examples of how marketing teams in the dermatology and oncology indications leveraged health information behavior insights to reveal the what, when, why, and to what end patients engage with health information. Discover how this new level of behavioral insights can help you better define strategies which could positively impact the patient journey and medical decision-making.

Whether we are struggling with personal health issues or going through a global pandemic, health information is crucial to modern life. Health information underlies many, if not all, decisions made by both healthcare professionals and patients in the healthcare setting, particularly when it comes to decision-making on treatments.

Healthcare decisions don’t take place in a vacuum. They result from different factors like individual characteristics, the context of a specific health condition, the availability of knowledge, etc.

Therefore, there is great variety in the degree to which people want to know about their health condition, engage with information, and participate in healthcare decision-making processes. This spectrum of behavior can be explained by the notion of health orientation and health information behavior.

How can pharmaceutical companies improve outcomes by exploring this behavioral spectrum?

In the early days of COVID-19, the head of the World Health Organization stated it was not only fighting a global pandemic, but also an ‘infodemic.’ Since then, COVID-19 has made it painfully clear that timely and trustworthy information is of vital importance to public and individual health, especially when inaccurate or misleading information is on the rise. Whether tackling a global health crisis or battling personal health issues, credible health information is paramount.

If you work in the pharmaceutical or med-tech industries, you know too well how health information, as well as communications and channel strategies, are of greater importance than ever before.